A golden thread of grace

It’s been a good month for British folk-rock band Mumford and Sons. Babel, their second album was Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards, and at last week’s Brit Awards they won in the ‘British Group’ category.

Mumford and Sons are often asked if they are a Christian band. The question arises partly because of references in their lyrics. Babel for instance includes lines like the following: ‘I’d set out to serve the Lord’; ‘Lord forget all of my sins’; ‘I was told by Jesus all was well so all must be well.’

In addition the songs reflect Christian moral values, and it’s known that Marcus Mumford was brought up in an evangelical Christian environment – his parents John and Eleanor Mumford are British leaders of the Vineyard group of churches.

In fact band denies being a Christian outfit. Mumford says that he and the other three band members ‘all have our separate views on religion, but I think faith is something to be celebrated. I have my own personal views, they’re still real to me, and I want to write about them.’

And might these ‘personal views’ be specifically Christian? Well, he has also said ‘We don’t feel evangelical about anything. Really. Other than music.’ And ‘I don’t even call myself a Christian. Spirituality is the word we engage with more. We’re fans of faith, not religion.’

The songs in Babel are young men’s songs, intense and passionate lyrics of love and relationship, struggles with temptation, failure and sin. Though they are intentionally opaque and hard to interpret, we hear the anguish. 

But running through the album is a golden thread of grace which as you listen reaches out until you sense grace calling in your own situation. ‘Give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light’ runs one lyric. Another envisages the glory grace promises: ‘We will run and scream. You will dance with me. And we will be who we are and they’ll heal our scars.’

It’s not surprising to come across grace in an album not specifically religious. For every day we are, all of us, sought out by evidence of hope and grace – in books and film and music and art, in nature and spring’s rebirth, in friendships, in the lessons of faith traditions, in unexpected joys.

Instinctively a Christian listening to Mumford and Sons’ lyrics will find herself applying phrases, whatever their original meaning, in a Christian context. For instance, the following resonates with many of us in the context of our relationship with God: ‘When I’ve hit the ground neither lost nor found, if you’ll believe in me I’ll still believe.’ And it’s easy to respond in these words to the loving responsiveness of God: ‘You said yes as I said please.’

And these lines, from Hopeless wanderer express the same sentiments with which God addresses us, calling us to hope and direction: ‘Don’t hold a glass over the flame. Don’t let you heart grow cold. I will call you by name. I will share your road.’

But it is hard to believe that a song like I will wait, such a powerful expression of commitment is addressed simply to another human. It sounds like a prayer. Frankly I can’t listen to the song without my heart praising God.

Here are some sample lines: ‘Tame my flesh and fix my eyes.’ (don’t miss the double meaning of the word ‘fix’); ‘And I’ll kneel down, wait for now.’; ‘Raise my hands, paint my spirit gold, ‘Cos I will wait, I will wait for you.’

Bob Dylan, a hero of Mumford’s said ‘I have been born very far from where I’m supposed to be and so I’m on my way home.’ It seems to me that Mumford’s songs are songs of the journey home, songs about discovering, and responding to grace.

We rejoice that God fills our lives with inviting evidences of grace whispering incognito through the fabric of our existence, but there is a time for unmasking the source of grace, hope and love – Jesus Christ himself. For when we hear grace whispering, we are hearing Christ. When we respond to grace, we are responding to Christ. When grace enfolds us, Christ’s arms are around our shoulders.

Mumford and Sons emphasis the need for choice when grace calls. ‘In this twilight how dare you speak of grace,’ says a line from one of the darkest songs on Babel, Broken Crown. Yet even there grace is present, and what matters is how we respond: ‘In this twilight our choices seal our fate.’

But if we respond positively to grace, we will not be disappointed. As an earlier Mumford song pus it ‘Love it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, it will set you free.’

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 28th February 2013)